CommentaryJUNE 2019 ARE WE ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE? EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE MAY BE FAR MORE UNLIKELY THAN WE THINK by Ethan Siegel MARVEL AND THE JEWS John Podhoretz THE BONES Commentary OF BRISK Meir Y. Soloveichik THE GILDED JUNE 2019 : VOLUME 147 NUMBER 6 147 : VOLUME JUNE 2019 SWEATSHOP Rob Long $5.95 US : $7.00 CANADA $7.00 : US $5.95 JUNE 2019 COVER.indd 1 5/13/19 3:58 PM Acts of terror injure hundreds of Israelis. One act from you can save thousands. In Israel, only one agency is the official ambulance, disaster-response, and blood-services agency for the nation’s 9 million people. Yet, it’s not funded by the government. When you support Magen David Adom, you get the satisfaction of knowing your gift has impact. If you value life and want to make Israel a stronger, safer place, there’s no greater way than by supporting Magen David Adom. Save a life in Israel. Support Magen David Adom at afmda.org/one-act or call 866.632.2763. JUNE 2019 COVER.indd 2 5/13/19 3:57 PM EDITOR’S COMMENTARY The Human Miracle JOHN PODHORETZ UR EARTH WOULD BE so much better if it I think this notion has something to do with the didn’t have people, wouldn’t it? That notion— environmentalist downgrade of humanity over the past Owhat you might call a view of original sin ab- half century. Some of us can believe humanity is beyond sent possibility of redemption—is the hidden backbone salvation and the world would be better without it be- of radical environmentalism. Alan Weisman’s highly cause, after all, we are not all there is; somewhere else influential 2007 book,The World Without Us, offers an there is intelligent life, and it’s better than we are, and idyllic view of the natural healing that would cure the so our existence just isn’t that important in the cosmic earth of its unnatural deformities were humankind to scale of this. vanish. Its themes are echoed almost daily in the press But read Siegel’s article and you will see that the to this day. one-in-a-googleplex possibility that there is no other Weisman’s book was an echo of the idea espoused life is nowhere near as far-fetched as it might seem by Greenpeace founder Paul Watson, who once said, at first. He lays out the unimaginable complexity of “We, the human species, have become a viral epidemic the processes that made elementary life possible and to the earth...[the] AIDS of the earth.” how they were followed by its slow transmutation into Modern environmentalism situates human wick- higher forms. edness not in man’s behavior toward other men, as the As with all such explorations of the unfathom- Bible does, but in the misuse and mistreatment of natu- able, the ideas that rise from this inevitably bump up ral resources, and it thereby judges humankind. against the inexplicable. You can lay out the predicates We are bad. We should be punished. We shouldn’t for intelligent life, but there is no way to account for even be here. the development of consciousness. This is one of the But what if there is nothing but us? reasons why evolutionary fanatics have become so These thoughts were provoked by Ethan Siegel’s insistent on denying the inscrutability of conscious- lead article in this month’s issue. Siegel does not take up ness—because a person’s capacity for self-knowledge the larger moral or spiritual questions raised in “Are We simply cannot be explained away as a by-product of Alone in the Universe?” Rather, he martials probability evolution itself. theory and circumstantial evidence to suggest there is “What a piece of work is a man!” says Hamlet. a very real possibility that life—more precisely—intel- “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form ligent life does not exist anywhere else but here. and moving how express and admirable! In action how This would not have seemed shocking before we like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!” And then, began to learn as much as we have learned in the past being Hamlet, he lowers the boom: “And yet, to me, what hundred years about the cosmos and before we our- is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.” selves began our explorations beyond our atmosphere. Humankind may be the greatest miracle of the We have come to know so much about the sheer size not universe—and the very fact that it might be the miracle only of our galaxy but also about the universe itself that points to the divine as the source. God gave us free will, it has become axiomatic to anyone who thinks seriously and it is our perversity that we use it to suggest our about life beyond our earth that it simply must exist and existence isn’t a gift but a curse. Man delights not man. that we just haven’t been able to make contact yet. But he should.q Commentary 1 Columns.indd 1 5/13/19 3:54 PM June 2019 Vol. 147 : No. 6 Articles Ethan Are We Alone in the Universe? 17 Siegel Extraterrestrial intelligence may be far more unlikely than we think. Jonathan The Gaza Conundrum 23 Schanzer Israel has many options, none good. John Marvel and the Jews 27 Podhoretz Moviegoing past, present, and future. Joseph The Achievement of Vasily Grossman 31 Epstein Was he the greatest writer of the past century? Politics & Ideas Sohrab A Voice of Reason 37 Ahmari The Right Side of History, by Ben Shapiro Noah The Financial Frontier 39 Rothman The Case for Space, by Robert Zubrin Wilfred DDs and PPs 42 Reilly The Privileged Poor, by Anthony Abraham Jack Columns.indd 2 5/13/19 3:54 PM Politics & Ideas Brian America’s Regiment 45 Stewart Sacred Duty, by Tom Cotton Naomi Huckleberry Spin 46 Schaefer Riley How to Raise a Boy, by Michael Reichert Culture & Civilization Terry The Sad Tale of Charlie Movie Star 49 Teachout Rock Hudson, never himself. Judith Streaming Sacred 52 Shulevitz The achievement of Shtisel. Monthly Commentaries Editor’s Commentary Washington Commentary 1 John Podhoretz Matthew Continetti 9 The Human Miracle The Trump Hotel: A Safe Space Reader Commentary Jewish Commentary 4 Letters Meir Y. Soloveichik 11 on the April issue The Bones of Brisk Social Commentary Cultural Commentary 7 Christine Rosen Machines Like Me, Manila in the Claws of 15 How Feminism Breeds Marital Resentment Light, and Who Is Michael Ovitz? Hollywood Commentary Rob Long 56 The Gilded Sweatshop Commentary 3 Columns.indd 3 5/13/19 3:54 PM READER COMMENTARY Hate-Crime Hoaxers To the Editor: shootings in 10 major police de- the mainstream media amplifies ATE-CRIME HOAXES, as partments in Texas, Florida, and BLM’s message. HWilfred Reilly makes clear, California, specifically to bolster According to the paradigm of are part of a larger movement to BLM’s point. When he concluded, “implicit bias,” you may think that portray America as irredeemably he called his findings “the most sur- you are not biased, and that you’ve bigoted, when, in fact, we are a re- prising result of my career.” As he never discriminated against any- markably open, generous, and wel- wrote: “On the most extreme use of one on the basis of ancestry, gen- coming nation (“Hate-Crime Hoax- force—officer-involved shootings— der, or sexual preference, and you es,” April). There are two examples we find no racial differences in can still be a bigot. Advocates of of false claims of American bigotry either the raw data or when con- this idea have constructed “Implic- that have become particularly effec- textual factors are taken into ac- it Association Tests” (IATs) that are tive and widespread. The first is that count.” In fact, Houston police shot now administered by computer to proffered by the Black Lives Matter at white suspects 24 percent more police officers, employees of private movement. The second is the idea, often than at black ones, although companies, college freshmen, and birthed by academics, of “implicit Fryer said that this difference was public-school students. bias.” not statistically significant. Wash- But the science behind the tests Could Black Lives Matter be the ington State University researcher is poor. Reproducibility of IATs is biggest “hate-crime hoax” of our Lois James found similar results: far below conventional standards era? Its founding principle is that “We tend to find that officers can in psychology. Moreover, the pre- American police are violent racists be more hesitant to shoot black dictive power of IAT scores for who deliberately and dispropor- suspects than white suspects,” he actual acts of bias in the real world tionately shoot innocent, unarmed wrote, “even when they implic- is nonexistent and sometimes even African-American men. But there itly associate black suspects with inverted. IATs are used to indoc- is no evidence of such a plague. increased threat.” None of this trinate large numbers of people, Roland G. Fryer, Jr. an econom- appears to matter to BLM, which including children, into falsely be- ics professor at Harvard, conduct- advances false claims of system- lieving that they are mean-spirit- ed a systematic review of police wide lethal police bigotry. And ed—and that the people around 4 June 2019 Columns.indd 4 5/13/19 3:54 PM them are mean-spirited. These examples work as cul- tural complements to individual hate-crime hoaxes. Both BLM and “implicit bias” have become insti- tutionalized, despite their false or flawed factual bases.